There is no cure for the disease, which causes vomiting, diarrhoea and internal and external bleeding.

Glenn Marsh from the CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) said any vaccine or therapy was a long way off.

"It's unlikely that any vaccine that's developed now would come quickly enough for this current outbreak," Dr Marsh said.

The ferret is a very good model for human disease.

Glenn Marsh, CSIRO researcher

He said they were at the start of the process, working with ferrets to understand how the Zaire Ebola virus made people sick, while another strain did not.

"So, Reston Ebola virus, even though it infects humans, it doesn't cause any disease at all," Dr Marsh said.

"These viruses are very closely related, and there's no real good evidence to say why one causes the disease and one doesn't, so by comparing these in animal models, we hope we can get a little bit more information about the differences between them."

Researchers have also been working with ferrets to understand the Hendra and Nipah viruses.

"The ferret is a very good model for human disease," Dr Marsh said.

"If we infect the ferret with Hendra we get a very similar disease to what's seen in humans, and the hope is if we put Ebola virus into a ferret, we'll also see a disease similar to what's seen in a human."

Facility one of the 'highest-containment' labs in the world

The disease infects people through contact, usually with bodily fluids that contain the virus, before spreading to other parts of the body.